I have learnt not to expect much privacy living in a lane house. Everyone sees my washing hanging out, they know what time I come and go and they see everyone arriving. This week however, I was surprised to see that someone with very little consideration of her own privacy, moved downstairs into the room which has been renovated.
Not only has the main entance been changed so that the flat opens straight out into the lane not from inside the house, but there’s not even a curtain hanging in the window. It took me a whie to ralise that it wasn’t just her house but also her work – she has set up a massage parlour under my bedroom! I am not sure whether to be happy about this or not.
She hasn’t had one customer that I have seen or heard – she spends all her time lying on the bed looking at her phone. When I asked her whether she wasn’t worried about having no curtains and living and sleeping there, she pointed to the hanging curtain around the massage bed.
She said she just pulls that around the bed when she sleeps! She’s a brave girl. And if she doesn’t do some marketing pretty soon, she will have to move out and that nasty man who bangs on the ceiling will return. I have seen him back here twice since he left.
Privacy is almost impossible to get here and I was reminded of exactly how much detail THEY have on you if they wanted to see exactly what you are up to and where you are going. Last week I decided to see how much money was left on my travel card and put it into one of the recharging machines. I was surprised (I don’t know why!) to see every journey I had taken. All of it recorded for the govt. spies to see.
And, as I am on a rant about privacy, I am fed up of all the marketing calls I get on my phone. Thanks to Wechat I never now get phone calls from any of my contacts – they all use wechat, so I know that when my phone rings, it’s always a marketing call.
Sometimes I pick it up and shout into te receiver but it does no good because they are all recorded messages. It’s not even a person calling me – it’s a bloddy machine.